Documenting the War Effort: Imamura Taihei and Wartime Japanese Film Theory
Friday December 7th, 2012
4:00 P.M.
121 Folwell Hall
4:00 P.M.
121 Folwell Hall
A presentation by Dr. Naoki Yamamoto
(Ph.D., East Asian Languages and Literatures/Film Studies, Yale University)
This lecture examines the writings of Imamura Taihei (1911-1986) in an attempt to establish a new critical framework for approaching the legacy of non-Western film and media theories. Widely acclaimed as one the most significant theorists in the history of Japanese cinema, Imamura's work was marked by his dual interest in documentary and animation, the two marginalized film genres that garnered greater popularity in the period after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
In contrast to the commonplace assumption that treats these as the opposite set of filmmaking at large, Imamura shrewdly redefined them as sharing the same mission of offering both concrete and animated documentations of the world in motion. Equally at stake in his theorization was the increasingly significant role of cinema as a tool for mass communication, its penetrating power to mediate the experience of everyday life. By reading him alongside such theorists as Béla Balázs, Walter Benjamin and Marshall McLuhan, this lecture seeks to elucidate the enduring relevance of Imamura's film theory to today's mediascape. At the same time, it also aims to historicize his writings by tracing how his call for the socialization of the film medium became integrated into the official discourse of Japanese fascism.
Naoki Yamamoto is applying for the tenure-track position in Japanese literature and culture in the Department of Asian Languages & Literatures.
Click here for a lecture flyer.
